In-between The Picture Plane

Navigating the Interface

The act of capturing and documenting our lives – belongings, personal spaces and locations is increasingly ubiquitous in the social media era. This thesis investigates how in a culture of validation, the strive to capture the backdrop of a place of influence directs the body in space. The experience of the body through the built environment is flattened as it is experienced through the lens of the camera capture. And at that place of capture this thesis asks: are you really here?

 

In attempting to understand the space between the built environment and the capture, the mechanics of perspective are constructed according to the phone’s camera angle and lens length. This device is used as a platform to create depth, through the flattened captured image. It orients the body in relationship to it, as when the body and the view skew from the constructed perspective cone, the perception of the aligned picture plane breaks, allowing the body to exist in-between the planes. The single unit armature then progresses into many, choreographing the body in motion through space.

 

The ambition of this thesis is then to break the anticipated backdrop of influence as the body approaches it. The disruption and confusion seeks conscious presence. In approaching the backdrop of capture, the devices on the site are the drive to keep searching for the aligned picture plane, thus choreographing the body in a configuration that changes the anticipated experience of that space. The new program becomes the spiral of broken picture planes, a sudden interaction and a shared experience with another body.